Heart of Oak

by Alexander Kent

  Adam was on his feet without realizing it. “Another ship, sir.” Like all those others in that waiting room. Refusing to admit any doubt.

  Grenville looked at a clock on the mantel as it chimed delicately. He pulled out his watch, as if it were a signal. The clerk had risen from the desk and his eyes were on the door.

  Grenville smiled, but his eyes gave nothing away. “I heard that you intend to be married?”

  “I—am hoping—” He stared down as Grenville seized his hand. The fingers were like iron.

  “Then do it. Bless you both.” He turned away. “Be patient, Bolitho. A ship will come.”

  The door was open, and instinct told him another visitor was waiting for an audience with this man, so frail and so powerful. Always on call to the First Lord himself; he would forget this meeting before that clock chimed again.

  He saw that Grenville had turned his back on the door and was looking directly at him. He could feel the force of his gaze like something physical.

  He said, “I hold a certain authority here in Admiralty. Some would describe it as influence. But I have never forgotten the truths that make a sailor.” He gestured around the room, dismissing it. “To walk my own deck, to hear the wind’s voice above and around me—nothing can or will replace that.” He shook his head, impatient or embarrassed. “I had to know, Bolitho, to be certain. Now be off with you. The chief clerk will take care of your requirements.”

  Adam was in the passageway, and some one was handing him his hat.

  “This way, sir.” A different porter, and the door was shut. As if he had imagined it.

  But the words lingered in his memory. I had to know, to be certain.

  He touched the sword, pressing the weight of it against his hip. He did not see the same two officers turn as he passed them.

  The old captain had seen all the faces of command. The blame and recrimination as well as the huzzas of triumph when an enemy’s flag dipped through the smoke of battle. And when pride vanquished the doubt, and the fear.

  He could still feel the iron grip on his hand. Then do it!

  To see her again, to be with her. Walk with me.

  It seemed to take an eternity before the chief clerk was satisfied. Questions, answers, papers that needed a signature. Then it was done. On his way to the entrance hall, he passed the main waiting room again. All the chairs were stacked at one end, and two men were mopping the floor in readiness for another day. A door opened and slammed, but neither looked up from his work.

  The doors of Admiralty were opened, and the air like ice. It was pitch dark on the street outside. But there were carriages, and men’s voices passing the time of day. One would take him to Bethune’s house. But all he saw was the officer who had just emerged from the sealed room. The last interview of the day. One of many…Perhaps after the long wait, he had been offered some hope. How many times?

  Then suddenly he swung round and stared at Adam’s uniform and the gold lace, caught momentarily in the light from the porters’ lodge, and then, openly, at his face. Not envy. It was hate, like a raw wound.

  “This way, Captain Bolitho!”

  He followed the porter down the steps and into the cold darkness. Like a brutal warning. Something he would never forget.

  The coachman jumped down from his box and lowered the step with a flourish.

  “’Ere we are, sir. ’Nother cold night, by the feel of it!”

  Adam stamped his feet, looking up at the house. The coachmen employed by the Admiralty certainly knew their business: he would never have found his own way back to this place. Even so, it seemed to have taken far longer than his journey to Whitehall. Perhaps the coachman had taken a more indirect route, on the off-chance that his passenger might request some amusement after his day’s dealings with their lordships.

  It had been another world. Glimpses of a London he would never know: people standing around braziers in the street, waiting for their employers or merely for companionship. On one corner a whore, on another a tall, ragged man reciting poetry, or preaching, or perhaps singing. No one had appeared to be listening.

  He felt for some coins, fumbling; he was more weary than he had thought. There were lights in most of the surrounding windows, but not at this house.

  “Thank ’ee, sir!” The coachman’s breath was like smoke in the lamplight. “I ’ope we meet again!”

  Adam turned as the front door swung open. He must have handed him more than he knew.

  “Welcome back, sir! I was beginning to think you had been held up somewhere! Perhaps literally!”

  It was Francis Troubridge, Bethune’s young flag lieutenant, still impeccably dressed, his uniform as neat as when he had boarded the stage at Portsmouth.

  There was something odd about the house, though; something wrong. Baggage in the entrance hall, still covered with a waterproof sheet.

  He swung round and saw Jago emerging from the shadows beneath the great, curving staircase, grim-faced, eyes steady. Anticipating the worst and ready for it.

  “No squalls, Cap’n?” And then, reading his expression, “I knew it, an’ I told ’em as much!”

  They shook hands, a hard grip, as if to settle something. Like those other times, when even survival had been in doubt.

  “No ship yet, Luke. But no squalls either.”

  Troubridge watched and listened and made a mental note of it. The captain and his coxswain; but it went far deeper than that. He had learned a lot. He was still learning.

  Adam was looking up the stairs. “It’s very quiet. Where is everybody?”

  Troubridge said, “Sir Graham has gone. To join Lady Bethune…It was all very sudden.”

  Adam rubbed his cheek with his knuckles. Not like their arrival: Bethune had slammed through the house as if fired by some demonic energy, barking instructions and questions at Troubridge or his frog-like secretary and rarely waiting for a reply from either. More like the vice-admiral Adam had come to know and not the moody, despairing man, often the worse for drink, who had spent most of his time in his own quarters during Athena’s final passage to Portsmouth.

  “Did he leave word for me? I am relieved of duty until further orders, but he must have known that.”

  “He knew.” Troubridge bit his lip. “Lady Bethune left before him. I thought she was pleased at the turn of events.”

  Adam sat down on a carved, uncomfortable chair, and thought of the slight, white-haired Grenville. Some would describe it as influence.

  He looked directly at the flag lieutenant. “Forgive me. I intended to ask. What will you do?”

  Troubridge looked vaguely around the gracious hallway. “I am going to visit my father. He will doubtless know soon enough what has happened.”

  So many memories. Troubridge, the aide who so adroitly fended off any problem or difficulty that might trouble his superior, any day, at any hour. And the Troubridge who had become a true friend in so short a time. Here, in London, when he had been at Adam’s side as they had burst into that sordid studio where Lowenna was fighting off an attack. Jago had been with them. What had Sir Richard called his closest friends and companions? My Little Crew. Or as he had heard another describe them, We Happy Few.

  Troubridge had referred to “my father.” He was Admiral Sir Joseph Troubridge, well known and respected in the navy. A veteran of The Saintes and the Glorious First of June, as a lieutenant he had been a friend of the young Horatio Nelson. And now he was leaving the Navy List to take up a prestigious appointment with the Honourable East India Company, “John Company” as it was nicknamed.

  Troubridge’s future would be in safe hands. But like the Admiralty waiting room, it was no solution.

  Troubridge smiled for the first time.

  “I will let you know. I once asked that you might accept my service in the future, if there was any chance.”

  Adam gripped his arm. “You will always be my friend, Francis. Be sure of that. And Lowenna’s, too.”

  A door opened and Tolan appeare
d in the hallway. He said to Troubridge, “Your carriage is here, sir,” but he was looking at Bolitho. “I have already had your things taken down.”

  Troubridge sighed. “They are closing the house, Captain Bolitho. Sir Graham will no longer be staying in London, I fear.” He added briskly, the flag lieutenant again, “You are leaving tomorrow. I had word from Whitehall. I wish you Godspeed and good fortune.” And to Jago, “Keep a weather eye on the Captain, will you?”

  They shook hands again.

  “Until the next horizon, Francis.”

  They heard the sharp clatter of wheels, and Adam imagined the eyes at other windows along this quiet street.

  Jago said, “There’ll be some grub soon, Cap’n. You must be fair starvin’.”

  Adam turned from the door. Troubridge had been waiting for him. In case he was needed.

  He saw that Tolan was still standing by the stairs.

  “When are you joining Sir Graham?” He must be truly drained. Otherwise he would have understood.

  Jago said harshly, “The vice-admiral’s lady told him to sling his hook! That’s the bald truth of it!”

  Tolan said, “I can deal with it.”

  Adam sat again. The floor had shifted like a heaving deck, and his legs had almost buckled beneath him.

  It was over. He tested each thought before it took shape. Tomorrow I will go home. To Falmouth. To Lowenna. If…He stopped it right there.

  “I would relish something to drink, if you please. To swallow today’s doubts, and the regrets.” He paused. “If you care for it, Tolan, we can make you welcome at Falmouth.”

  Jago was nodding, unsmiling.

  Tolan could only stare at him with incomprehension, his normal composure shaken. Then he said, “I’ll make sure you never regret it.”

  Jago had recognized the signs. “I’ll go with him, an’ bear a hand.”

  Adam barely heard him. He would fall asleep here and now unless he took a grip of himself.

  So quiet. No call to arms, no rattle of drums and stampede of running feet. The knot twisting in your stomach. And the fear you could never show when you were most needed.

  He touched the letters inside his coat. Spoke her name.

  He knew that somehow she would hear him.

  2 ALIVE AGAIN

  THE GIRL NAMED LOWENNA WINCED as her hip jarred against a small table, but she made no sound. She was more aware of the silence, and the floor that was like ice under her bare feet. She could not even remember getting out of bed, and yet her whole body was shivering, and she knew it was not only the cold.

  The room was in complete darkness, and yet she thought she could discern the outline of a window, which had not been visible before. Before when? Nancy Roxby, Adam’s aunt, had stayed with her for most of the day, making sure she was not alone even for a walk along the headland, where the wind off Falmouth Bay had been like a whetted knife.

  She composed herself, running her fingers through her long hair to free it from beneath the thick shawl, which she did not recall taking from the chair.

  The house was quiet. Still, as if it were listening. She pulled the shawl closer and felt her heart under her hand. Still beating too fast. The end of a nightmare: the nightmare. But why now? The long struggle was over. With the care and persistence of her guardian, she had won, although she shuddered now at the memory of pain and brutal violation, her pleas and screams only inciting worse attacks. Sometimes she seemed to hear her father’s voice, sobbing and imploring them to stop, as if he were the victim.

  She walked toward the window, her feet soundless, calming her mind as she had taught herself to do. Nothing could soil this day. Adam was arriving in Falmouth. Today. It was not a dream, or some cherished hoard of memories, it was real. Now.

  She untied a cord and dragged open the heavy draperies. It was still dark, with only a hint of grey to distinguish the land from the sky. Not even a star, nor had there been when she had crossed to this window during the night. Or did I dream that, too?

  What was Nancy doing, she wondered. She had been born here, in the old Bolitho house, the daughter of another naval captain. She gripped the cord until it hurt her fingers. Like Adam. Nancy, always busy with the affairs of her own estate, and much of the time with this one. She had two grown children and two grandchildren, who lived somewhere in London. Her husband, the formidable Lewis Roxby, was dead, but she seemed unbreakable. A gentle woman, but firm when necessary, she was nearly sixty years old, and always surprised that she could still turn a man’s head when she passed.

  Lowenna found a handle and carefully forced open the window. There was no wind, but the air took her breath away and touched her hair like frost. As if she were naked.

  She closed it, but not before she had heard a voice below the wall around the drive from the stables. They were up and about, preparing for the arrival of the Bolitho carriage. How did they know? The roads in February could be treacherous, even though Young Matthew, as they still called the senior coachman, was said to know them better than any one.

  Adam would be collected from an inn on the outskirts of Truro. She shivered again. Perhaps not far from the Old Glebe House, where she had posed for Sir Gregory Montagu and found her courage and her pride again. And where life had changed, when Adam had been directed through Montagu’s big, untidy studio. It had been fate: good fortune or destiny, who could tell? And how much of those two years since their meeting had they shared? Weeks, or only days? Now was not the time to reckon them.

  She found the lantern near the door and opened its shutter. It was not much of a light; somebody would deal with it later. Like everything else in this house.

  When would she stop being merely a visitor here and become a part of it? Like the midshipman who had once been Adam’s servant. He was here now, and this was his only home. Or did he still regard it as a refuge? Like me.

  Most of the time this house was empty but for those who cared for it, and the ghosts of vanished Bolithos whose portraits lined the landing and hung in the fine old study. And the latest portrait of Adam, who was adamantly not a ghost, gazing from the canvas throughout the months of his long absence, wearing the yellow rose on his uniform coat. My rose…Montagu had asked for her advice: the portrait had not been quite right, not to his satisfaction. They had discussed it, and together they had found what was lacking: that elusive smile. Now it was Adam.

  She glanced at the window again. Brighter? Yes. She allowed herself to smile. Not a dream. He was coming home. And I am not afraid.

  If only Montagu had lived to see and share her hopes and happiness, but he had never recovered from the terrible injuries suffered in the fire which had destroyed the Old Glebe House. The Last Cavalier, Adam had called him. Always alert, dedicated and passionate. Ageless, with his neat, rakish beard; even the paint-daubed smock he usually wore could never conceal his courtly charm. It was so easy to imagine a rapier replacing the brush.

  She had been his ward, and he had saved her life. After I tried to end it.

  She thought of the last time she had been with Adam, at the old boatyard where Montagu had often gone when he wanted to work on a painting undisturbed. They had been alone, and became the lovers in fact that they had been in name.

  I was not afraid.

  She could hear Montagu’s voice, almost the last words he had spoken to her before the doctors had turned her away. Destiny, my girl. Fate.

  How many times had she clung to those dying words.

  She heard some one whispering outside the door, the clink of glass or metal. It was time.

  “Thank you, Gregory. So much.” She could see him clearly, turning from a new canvas, a quizzical smile above the jaunty beard. The Last Cavalier.

  Nancy, Lady Roxby, waited until the doors had closed behind her and held out her arms, her eyes shining with pleasure and emotion.

  “It is so good to see you, Adam!” She hugged him, imagining the smell of the sea on his clothing, her face cold against his. “You must be tired
out!”

  Adam released her and looked at the girl, still standing in the arched entrance, surprised and a little unnerved by the warmth of the welcome.

  It had been mid-morning when the carriage, with Young Matthew on the box, had swung around the curved drive and pulled up beneath the leafless trees. “Grand to have you home again, Captain Bolitho!” His cold-reddened face had split into a grin, and other figures had appeared as if to a signal. Some Adam knew only by sight. Others had always been part of his life, like old Jeb Trinnick, who had been in charge of the Bolitho stables as long as any one in the family could recall. And there were faces he did not recognize, and some far older than when he had last seen them.

  In this mood it had been overwhelming, although he should have been prepared for it. A Bolitho was back from the sea.

  Smiles, shouts of greeting, others running to calm the horses. And Nancy leading the way, smiling, close to tears as he had known she would be. And then he saw Lowenna at the foot of the steps.

  Less than a year: only a dog watch, the deepwater Jacks would say, but not to those who were always left behind.

  He had held her, his hands on her waist, how long he did not know. As if they had been quite alone. She had turned her head very slightly and he had felt her shiver, or brace herself as she said, “I’ve waited…”

  He bent to kiss her cheek, but she had turned her face suddenly, and he had kissed her mouth. Like that other time…Let them think what they like.

  And now they were here. Some one was whistling; the carriage was moving away from the entrance. He heard a dog barking somewhere and a girl laughing, cut off sharply as if admonished by one of her superiors.

  Lowenna unfastened the cloak from her shoulders. It was the same old boat cloak, cleaned and patched a few times. All those vigils along the headland or a beach somewhere, watching for the first sign of a ship. The ship.

  He said, “There’s so much—”

  She reached out and touched his lips. “Hold me.” She let her arms fall. “Just hold me.”